Life and Times of The Johnston family: August 2014

Now on to last week.(the 18-24th) Monday was the first day of school! And of following our new schedule and it went pretty well actually! Elizabeth is doing mostly 2nd-3rd grade work this year. She chose to do Biology for science as she loves learning about plants and animals, and she chose Ancient Times for History as we didn't get much beyond ancient Egypt last year, but she knows more about Egypt and Egyptians than I ever did! Devin is doing preschool with me and starting in September with the developmental preschool. This year I put together both kids curriculum myself and I'm awful proud of that as it was a lot of hard work, research, reading reviews and praying to figure it all out! School is going great and both kids are LOVING it! Our daily schedule goes as follows: get up and dressed, have breakfast, brush teeth, have Devotional(where we sing a primary song, say a prayer, read from the Old Testament Stories, sing and say an article of faith, then say the Pledge of Allegiance) Then Devin goes and plays(usually with "learning toys" or books)Elizabeth does school. We start with our core subject(Mon. and Tue. are Science, Wed. is Geography, Thurs. is History, Friday is Art and Spanish) Then Elizabeth reads a chapter out of a chapter book, we're starting with basal readers, then it's math then spelling, reading comprehension and a page from Language Smarts. Then it's handwriting and I read to her, we're starting with Black Beauty. Even though she could read it herself I feel it's important for me to read aloud to her still. She ends with a critical thinking activity(Mon. is ZooLogic, Tue. is Smart Cookies, Wed. is Q Bits Thurs. is "What's New What's Missing What's Different, and Friday is free choice). After Elizabeth is done with school the kids play outside then have lunch then Devin goes to his room for quiet time while Elizabeth practices her piano and does her chores, then she's free to play. Then they switch Elizabeth goes to her room for quiet time and Devin does school with me. Devin's school goes as follows: Calendar and weather, then review letter, number, color, shape and opposite pair flash cars, then I do a simplified version of the Walk Beside Me preschool, so we sing a song, read a scripture and short "story" about the theme of the week such as A is for Adam...B is for Baptism. Then he sits at the desk and practices writing the letter of the week. Mon. he does activities from a seasonal theme book and Wed. is an activity from a general seasonal theme, this week the book was "Jamberry" and the theme was "All About Me". Friday he does Science. Then after the activity of the day he does two learning paths on ABC Mouse.com. Then it's "screen time" where they can either play the kindle or watch an educational show on tv. Then we go back outside, and then it's dinner time! The schedule is working out wonderfully so far! So continuing on with this last week Tuesday was Bravo classes, Wednesday and Thursday were just typical school days. Friday was typical except no Spanish as my parents were off RVing. That night we took the kids to Bravo for the parent date night. Tony and I went to dinner at Texas Roadhouse with a coupon, then we went grocery shopping. The kids had fun playing inside Bravo as it was raining, but that meant they were able to play in the tumbling room which is lots of fun! They had pizza for dinner(Devin had his packed bread and Pediasure) they made a frog craft then watched some of Princess and the Frog. Saturday one of our home teachers helped Tony put up the other shelf in our storage unit in the morning, then we went to Sams Club(as we've been looking at getting a better swing set for the kids) and noticed that they had their really nice one on clearance, so we went to the customer service desk and asked how many they had in stock and after she checked said that the one we saw was the last one in the valley! Tony asked if that was the lowest price they could offer and when she asked the manager he took an addition 20% off making it an incredibly too good to pass up deal! So we bought it and told them we'd pick it up on Monday. Then after lunch we drove to Tony's brother Matt's house for Tony's parent's 40th wedding anniversary dinner party celebration. Which was very nice, the food was delicious! Sunday was Stake Conference and since our kids can't manage to sit through an hour of sacrament meeting we don't even attempt to make them sit for two hours! We just had a lazy Sunday at home, we did spend some time in the backyard trying to figure out the best way to make everything we have back there fit with the new swing set. Monday Tony took off work and stayed home to work in the backyard, and pick up the swing set. Once again our wonderful home teacher helped us carry the huge tower part and put it in place(we bought the display so it was already assembled they just took the half with the swings off of the tower and took off the ladder and rock wall, so the pieces just had to be put back together) he helped with putting it together as well. The kids then spent hours playing on it, loving it! Oh I nearly forgot Monday afternoon I took Elizabeth out to find new glasses(as the pair she has now are her backup pair and are barely holding together), we ended up getting them from Walmart, they are super cute frames and she's very excited to get them! Tuesday was a typical school day with Bravo classes in the evening. Wednesday we did school in the morning, then in the afternoon we drove down to Bountiful and went to Cookie Cutters and both the kids got their hair cut. Devin's was getting super shaggy looking so he got quite a bit cut off, and then I finally convinced Elizabeth to cut her hair short again(as washing, drying and combing it always brings on fits). She looks sooooo adorable! I must say I absolutely love her with short hair! Both kids look so great! After that we stopped by the Bountiful Cemetery to see the head stones that had been placed on Tuesday. They turned out so beautifully!! Elizabeth asked me to take her picture by Uncle Eric's headstone because she misses him so much, especially his tickles. She really liked the laptop on his head stone cause as she said,"he was always doing stuff with computers!" And she really loved the butterflies and beautiful angel on Linda Kay's headstone. Both kids admired the Salt Lake Temple on my parents, though Devin was pretty convinced it was a castle. ;) After that we paid a visit to my grandma and grandpa Walker, my Aunt Susan was there as well so we had a good little visit while the kids played with the fun toys, until it was time to go home for dinner. We got home a few minutes before Tony did, let the kids have dinner upstairs with my dad while Tony and I went shopping for what we needed to bring to do dinner Saturday at the Johnston Camp up at the Spruces. Today is a typical school day and I'm just getting things ready to pack us up for our Labor Day camping weekend(though we'll be staying with my parents in their motorhome so it's not bad at all!) And that catches ya up!

Elizabeth's first day of school!!

When I asked her what she wanted to be when she grows up she told me, "A doctor...but don't write that cause I always put that on the board." ;) So she told me to write this instead!

Then of course Lovey had to have her picture with it too.

This is Elizabeth's curriculum, most of it, she has another science unit and several more chapter books, but this is what we're starting with.

Devin's first day of school!

Did you notice that we have another leftie?!!

When I asked him what he wanted to be when he grows up he first told me a sister! LOL Then it was a doggie, then I finally got him to this!

This is Devin's curriculum. Obviously the letter and themes change weekly, but this was his first week's stuff.

This is my wonderfully silly girl ready to go play outside, I love that she posed for me!

The super fun new swing set!

Good lookin' haircuts at Cookie Cutters!(I was going to snap a pic of Liz's hair down today so you could see how cute it is short but I forgot so just know it's about shoulder length and I'm sure you'll see it in the next post!)

Visiting Uncle Eric and Aunt Linda Kay's graves, to see the new headstones.

Going back to the week of August 11-17. It was a pretty typical week. Tuesday was Bravo classes, I put in a withdrawal form to take Elizabeth out of her dance/tumble class(you have to give a month notice) as she's signed up to start at UP With Kids a Children's Theater in September, which she is very excited about...especially since they're doing Frostbite which is a version of Frozen! Wednesday I took Elizabeth to have her vision checked....and we did not get great news. The vision in her left eye is much worse than it used to be. It's so bad that her brain is really only using her right eye to see out of, which will eventually make her left eye go lazy. So he ramped up her prescription, especially for her left eye and we're hoping that just being able to see better out of her left eye will convince her brain to use it more. If not then we'll patch her right eye and if that fails then she'll have to have surgery again. Her doctor is hopeful that we won't have to do surgery that the patch will work if needed. Sadly the astigmatism in her left eye doubled as well, so between her really strong prescription and bad astigmatism she has to have special order lenses now. What a Wednesday! Thanks to Mary for watching Devin for me! Friday was the kids' last day of summer vacation so we spent the morning having fun! Fist at a new splash pad that's just a few minutes away and super fun! We got there pretty early so it wasn't busy for the first little bit, but it did eventually get crazy busy and so Devin bowed out after only about 20 minutes, Elizabeth hung in for another about 40 minutes then even she was ready to be done. They changed into their clothes in the restroom then played at a couple playgrounds that are right next to the splash pad, the kids played for another hour then we drove to an empty pavilion at a park by our house, and had a picnic lunch. Then the kids played at that playground for almost another hour, then we came home and had quiet time. The kids both agreed it was a great last day of summer vacation! Saturday Mary came up again to watch Devin while Tony, Elizabeth and I went to the Ogden Temple Open House. Elizabeth liked it but obviously it's hard for her to understand exactly what goes on in the temple as she just wasn't fully satisfied with the simple answers. She did think it was very beautiful though! She told me she loved seeing a place like where mommy and daddy were sealed. She told me she's wondered what it looked like, and that it was different than what she thought...but prettier! In the information tent she read most of the plaques about the different parts of the temple and honestly I think it would have been better for her to have done that before she went through the temple, as Elizabeth is a read and understand kind of person. She loved seeing the Christus Statue, she pointed out the nail prints in His hands and feet, and told me, "Jesus really died for me, didn't he." Sometimes she really doesn't seem 5 years old! Tony showed her that the granite used on the temple came from Egypt and she just lit up! That girl LOVES Egypt!! It was a great experience together! When we got home we dropped Elizabeth off with Mary then went to the Credit Union to take care of some business. Then we had lunch and Tony took Elizabeth to the storage unit to start putting up the shelves, and Devin stayed home with me and just played while I cleaned and organized the school room. Both my and Tony's tasks were lots of hard work so when we were done we rewarded ourselves and the kids for being such a big help by going to Olive Garden with a gift card for dinner! It was so yummy!! Sunday Devin had a hard time getting to church so we were afraid he was going to be hard to drop off in nursery, but to my surprise he saw all the fun toys, and was fine! He went straight to his "go-to" toy, which is a little car raceway. Phew! Teaching our primary class went really well too, and Elizabeth reported being good as well so I call it a success!!

Fun at the Splash Pad!